The Secret Library, by Kekla Magoon, for Timeslip Tuesday

 

The Secret Library, by Kekla Magoon, has been out since May, and having enjoyed other books by the author, and liking libraries, I meant to read it....and then about a month ago I realized it was a time travel book, so there was no more waiting and here it is as this week's Timeslip Tuesday book.

Dally is a child of great wealth and privilege, but her life is horrible circumscribed.  Her grandpa, who brought adventure and fun into her life, has died, her (black) father died when she was very young, and her (white) mother is inflexibly focused on training Dally to someday assume control of the family business.  Being only 11, she would rather not have business tutoring most evenings after school, but that is her life.  There is no reasoning with her mother.

(me--her mother really is something else.  She's so awfully unaffectionate and single-minded and business focused that she's unbelievable, and this disminished my enjoyment of the book.)

Then Dally gets hold of an envelope her grandpa left with her, not to be opened until she's 21.  Of course she opens it, and it leads her to a Secret Library.

(me--I was taken aback to find that this is not a hidden sort of secret library, but literally a library of people's secrets, that can be checked out and visited in a time travel way.  I like hidden libraries more than I like libraries that make secrets available; I'd hate to have one of my own kids visiting my secrets...)

 So Dally begins to find secrets that call to her, learning secrets from her parents' life before her father died by actually travelling through time to watch things happen. 

(me-- it was nice that Dally had this magical chance to see her father and mother when they were young and in love (very sweet), and to see her grandfather again).

However, there are intimation that it is not all fun and harmless visits to the past.  The librarian tells her that many of the patrons are "needed for something," (p 121), and the proves to be the case for Dally. She also lets slip that sometimes patrons don't make it back....And Dally learns that the library has chosen her to be its next caretaker, which means never going out again through its doors when she assumes this responsibility.  

(me--which is a heck of a lot for a kid to have to contemplate.  Being trapped, even by a really neat library of time-travelling magic, is not what one necessarily wants from life....)

The next secret Dally takes from the shelf sends her back to a pirate ship almost 200 years in the past.  There she befriends the white captain, Eli, and the black first mate, Pete, and Jack, a boy of her own age.  And the secret revealed her is the location of the treasure that was the basis for her family's fortune. 

(me--I was surprised by how long we spent on the pirate ship with not much happening....but it was important that Dally grow to know and care about Eli, Pete and Jack.  And now I'm going into spoiler territory, so you can stop now if you haven't read it).

She meets these people again on her next visit, and this time it becomes clear what she is needed for.  Eli is a woman, and she is pregnant with Pete's child.  Pete has escaped slavery, but is still in danger, and Dally, who is also clearly black, is in danger too.   Dally and Jack (who turns out to be another time traveler, from 1960) are able to help Eli and Pete escape...

Then on her next trip through time, she meets their grandchildren, two grownup brothers, just as one of them breaks the news to the other that he's going to leave the family and pass as white.  Dally puts all the pieces together and realizes that these people she's met in the past are her own family.  And she realizes as well that she doesn't have to go back to her own time...

(me-very big spoiler coming up)

So she doesn't.  She stays with Jack in his own time in the 1960s growing up alongside him, and shows up at the library again, just after she left for the past that one last time, an older woman, ready to take on her role as its librarian. 

(me--and we are asked not to feel bad for her mother, because Dally explains everything, and her mother gets to watch her grow up by time travelling to the past to see it for herself,  Which I didn't find very satisfying from a maternal point of view).

So basically, the time travelling in the story is the mechanism through which we, the readers, see alongside Dally the past of her family, with all its darkness and love mixed together.  And though I certainly found it very readable and very interesting, I also found it frustrating.  Dally is so busy being used to show all this to the reader that she ends up not being all that much of a character in her own right.  

But that being said, I do think that Dally's adventures have great appeal for the target audience!